Runelords 22.0 - Carrying On
Devastated by the impact of the punishment levied by Tessirade, the group tried to collect themselves. Khyrralien devolved into an unending, wailing sob while Virgil and Eamon fell into silence. Luna and Aldern, both privy to the events that took place but utterly ignored by the god, moved to comfort them. Virgil was the first to snap back to a state of functionality, seemingly glad for the opportunity to divert his attention. They decided to secure the area, continue forwards with their previous plans to protect Turtleback and retake Fort Rannick, and to contact Pandemonium when they could. With that decided, Virgil took Eamon and Aldern to search the area, while Luna stayed with the inconsolable Khyr. The three men swam out and gave a cursory search of the lake bed for Eamon's dropped sword, though they found nothing. The container itself seemed secure for the moment, so they left it be. Writing off the sword as lost, they continued across the lake to the cabin. Inside, there were no traces of any of the women, but they did find some discarded rock samples, scrolls, and notes regarding a nested seven pointed ritual. It appeared that Koume was researching this spell, and possibly trying to recreate it. Meanwhile, Luna stayed with Khyr, who eventually cried himself to sleep. When he was quiet, Luna turned her attentions to the bottles of ithilium and discussed their composition with Zara. The book revealed that this substance, pure abjuration, was similar to what the "undying bones" were in actuality: pure necromancy. It was a substance functionally impossible to distill on Materia, but this gave Zara hope that it could exist and be acquired. The three men, finished in the cabin, moved to investigate the bridgehouse once more, interested in the basement. Inside, they found a series of small rooms. One room contained a tiny scale model of the dam itself, and appeared to have controls within it that were deactivated. However, an ioun stone hidden had been tucked away in one of its recesses, which Eamon claimed. In an adjacent room, they found two caged alcoves. Both had what appeared to be summoning/binding spells etched into the floor; one had a pile of ash in its center, while the other held a gigantic, trapped demon. He was terribly weak, but appeared to normally possess incredible strength; talking to him, they learned that learned that his life force was being siphoned off and being used to open and close the dam. With his permission, Virgil freed the summons with a mercy killing. As he disappeared, he cried vengeance against his summoner, Karzoug, with his fading breath. Virgil collected up the ashy remains in the second cell, recognizing it as the remains of a second devil who had not survived the siphoning. With that task done, the group reconvened and returned morosely to town. They made their way to the town infirmary to explain themselves to Ilsa, who would need to know that her allies no longer looked the same. Though they were received with disbelief, she eventually begrudgingly accepted their story. While she spoke, she mentioned the Shimmerglen, a nearby place known for its strange happenings and the hallucination-like experiences suffered by travelers who ventured through it, which caught Khyr's interest immediately. The next day, the five returned to the lake to make sure no one had come back to further destroy the dam. They found no one, but the weather had gotten worse again, rising the water level even more. No one in town seemed to know how the dam operated, but it was obvious that they needed to vent it somehow lest it overflow. The day following, Luna completed her work on a new spell: a negatively-charged Lesser Restoration, which allowed her and Aldern to heal the damaging mental effects they had suffered from fighting the abjurant essence creature. Their next goal was clear: find a way to vent the reservoir. Category:Rise of the Runelords